ON A FEW OF THE CHIEF CONTRASTS BETWEEN THE 

 ESSENTIAL DOCTRINES OF BUDDHISM AND OF 

 CHRISTIANITY, BY SIR M. MONIER-WILLIAMS, K.C.I.E. 



" It is one of the strange phenomena of the present day, that even 

 educated persons are apt to fall into raptures over the doctrines of 

 Buddhism, attracted by the bright gems which its admirers cull out 

 of its moral code, and display ostentatiously, while keeping out of 

 sight all the dark spots of that code, all its triviality and all those 

 precepts which no Christian could soil his lips by uttering. 

 It has even been asserted that much of the teaching in the 

 Sermon on the Mount is based on previously current moral precepts, 

 which Buddhism was the first to introduce to the world, 500 years 

 before Christ. But this is not all. The admirers of Buddhism 

 maintain that the Buddha was not a mere teacher of morality, but 

 of many other great truths. He has been justly called, say they, 

 ' the Light of Asia,' though they condescendingly admit that 

 Christianity, as a later development, is more adapted to become the 

 religion of the world. 



NOTE. Those who have observed the progress of modern thought 

 in regard to Neo-Buddhism will appreciate the insertion of the above 

 remarks as a sequel to the Address : they were delivered at a 

 public Conference this year, and have been revised for the Institute 

 by the author. Another distinguished Member of the Institute 

 writes : " It has always seemed to me that the important point 

 to keep in view as to Neo-Bnddhism is that the sentiment in 

 Arnold's Light of Asia is utterly false ; that the conceptions 

 there are borrowed from Christianity ; that Buddhism has not 

 merely failed in practice, but is essentially the bare hollow 

 emptiness that Sir Monier- Williams describes, and offers nothing 

 but metaphysics and superstition ; that, in fact, as to the first, 

 Schopenhauer is a better leader for those who wish Nihilism, and 

 that the whole of Esoteric Buddhism, so called, is a fraud." ED, 



